


you're atlas in his sleeping

by foxglovebrew



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Forget S8, M/M, Post-Canon, pretty much pwp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 05:41:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18204287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxglovebrew/pseuds/foxglovebrew
Summary: It’s like something out of a fantasy novel he might have read as a child. A tent and a bed piled with furs, warriors keeping watch outside. The dead of night broken by the sound of crackling embers, and his love under him like this, his hair spilling against the pillows.





	you're atlas in his sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> This one is because I'm obsessed with braid!Keith, but MOST OF ALL I'm obsessed with long-haired Keith and I needed some self-indulgent long-hair action.
> 
> This is nothing but fluff and smut and soft space boyfriends, and it was planned and written almost entirely while listening to 'Movement' by Hozier, so if you want something to put on while you read... you know what to do.

Shiro startles awake, and for a long moment he rests paralyzed, not knowing _what_ woke up him, only that something did.

He stares at the canvas above him—the tent. It’s quiet, inside. Only the usual nighttime sounds. The man next to him breathes evenly in restful sleep. The wolf, curled up at the opposite end of the tent, snuffles and yawns.

The sound comes again. A sharp crack, followed by laughter.

Shiro lets all his breath out in a rush. His heart is still racing, but sharp relief washes through him. Just the Blades outside, messing around.

He doesn’t let his guard down for long moments, though. He can’t. He sits up, and rubs a hand through his hair, and sits slouched among the furs, his head tilted towards the opening of the tent.

The flickering of the fire outside, where the Blades are clustered to keep watch, seeps through the canvas a little. He can see the outlines of things, his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

It’s a big tent. The locals insisted on offering it to them in recognition of their rank. There’s space for a bed pallet piled with furs, a stove in the center with its chimney poking through the top of the tent, a table—and Kosmo.

Kosmo really takes up most of the space.

As if sensing Shiro’s eyes on him, Kosmo’s eyes open. They shine in the darkness, somehow both unnerving and comforting.

They look at each other, while Shiro tries to regulate his breathing and also remain alert to any potential threats. Just in case.

But there’s nothing but the jovial chatter of the Blades outside.

Kosmo huffs at him and stands. His bulk blocks what little light there is. He pads closer and curls around the bed. The days when he could lie up on it with them are long gone.

Kosmo lays his big head over the edge of the bed, tucked into Shiro’s leg. His shining eyes stay open, his ears up and alert.

Shiro huffs, and his shoulders relax. He scratches behind Kosmo’s ear gratefully.

“Thanks, bud,” he whispers.

The body next to his stirs with a sigh.

Shiro looks down. Keith is on his back, his head turned towards him. One up-turned hand resting on his pillow, showing a flash of pale, vulnerable wrist. The other lies across his chest, which is half bared by one of the robes they were gifted to sleep in. It’s some light material a little like silk, kept loosely tied by a strip of fabric which has come undone in Keith’s sleep. Shiro can see the scar on his shoulder, where the robe has slipped off, and the almost-matching scar on his jaw.

Keith’s hair is so long now, unbound, an inkspill across the pillows. It curls against Keith’s neck, and Shiro wants to reach out, feel the silk of it on his fingers.  To brush it back from the long line of Keith’s throat and kiss him there. Gently. Soft enough not to wake him up.

He looks like something out of a fairy tale, lying there. A prince in slumber. Shiro sighs.

He stands gingerly, to avoid jostling the bed. Keith sleeps almost as lightly as Shiro does, but he’s also used to the small noise of Shiro getting up in the middle of the night. He doesn’t stir.

Shiro makes tea in the faint glow of the embers left in the stove. The water takes forever to heat, but Shiro doesn’t mind. It’s quiet. He listens to the murmurs outside, and the soothing pattern of Keith’s breath, and the faint crackling of the fire.

His bionic hand is good for measuring temperature exactly, and once the water is heated up just right, he pulls it from the fire. Soon he has a full cup in his hand, and he breathes in the warm, comforting smell of home. It seems like a silly luxury, to bring tea with him from Earth, but in moments like this he’s grateful for it. It calms him down. Soothes his soul.

He gets up and brings his cup with him, perching at the end of the bed. Keith shifts in his sleep and kicks Shiro’s side gently. Shiro holds his calf steady with his flesh hand.

It’s good. Peaceful.

Keith doesn’t stir for a long time. Shiro’s cup is mostly empty by the time his leg shifts under his palm, and the furs rustle as he sits up.

He makes a soft sound, low in his throat and husky with sleep, a tired and confused grunt. Shiro doesn’t turn around, but he smiles. He knows the face that goes with that sound. Messy black hair, a pillow mark on his flushed cheek. Tired, frowning eyes and a full, pouting mouth.

He rubs his thumb back and forth where he’s still holding Keith’s calf, feeling the prickle of Keith’s hair.

Keith’s warmth comes suddenly, his weight slumping against Shiro’s back. Keith rests his chin on Shiro’s shoulder, his long hair falling messy and soft against Shiro’s chest.

Keith lets out another low grunt, an acknowledgment and greeting in one. Shiro smiles again, and fingers the ends of Keith’s hair, turning his head to kiss his temple.

Keith leans into it, sighing. When Shiro finally catches a look at his face, his eyes open. The sight of them, dark and lovely, is always novel. Always good.

Lovely still when Keith’s lashes flutter briefly, and his eyes suddenly shine yellow. 

He can see so much better in the dark, like this. It took years of practice for him to be able to even partly control the change, instead of slipping into it unintentionally under the weight of strong emotions. Shiro feels pride and affection swell in his chest.

“Hi, baby,” Shiro murmurs, when Keith looks at him. His voice comes low and scratchy, too.

Keith hums, and one of his arms wraps around Shiro’s waist.

“What happened?”

Shiro’s fingers have made their way up the length of Keith’s hair, tangling gently at the base of his neck. He won’t make apologies for his mild obsession with Keith’s hair. It’s beautiful.

Keith’s beautiful.

“Just the Blades outside,” Shiro explains, just as one of the Blades says something that makes her companions laugh. “Woke me up.”

Keith frowns. Shiro already feels bad for the Blades, who are going to be facing a very disapproving Commander in the morning.

“It’s okay,” Shiro says. “It’s not their fault. These tents just don’t have very good sound proofing.”

Keith grunts again, this time like, _sure, if you say so._ His free hand comes up to brush Shiro’s hair back from his forehead. Turned towards each other like this, they’re so close that their noses almost brush. Shiro can smell the clean, soap smell of Keith’s hair.

“Don’t do that,” Keith says, his hand still petting Shiro’s hair gently. “I know it’s hard for you to go back to sleep.”

Shiro sighs, and feels suddenly _so_ tired of himself. It’s a brief feeling, not nearly as vicious as it used to be. But it’s true—it’s hard for him to sleep, and to stay asleep, and to fall back once he’s woken up. He just wishes things were easier.

“You should go back to bed,” Shiro says, and drinks the last drops from his now-lukewarm mug, setting it aside.

Keith tilts his head, and Shiro can practically _feel_ his eye-roll. He feels Keith rise on his knees behind him, his warmth pulling away slightly, his arm leaving Shiro’s waist. His other hand stays on Shiro, though, tracing the length of his jaw and settling on his chin. He uses his grip to turn Shiro’s head around to face him again—gentle but firm. Impossible to deny.

Keith’s eyes glow in the dark, and his smile shows the slightest hint of fangs. Shiro’s heart starts racing and Keith—his grin sharpens. He can probably hear it, feel it flutter against his thumb where it brushes Shiro’s neck.

Keith kisses him. Light at first, the barest brush of lips. Shiro lists after him, and is denied, left gasping for him.

“ _Keith_ ,” he says.

Keith smiles, and comes back to him. Another kiss, light as a feather. Then another. And another. Then Keith lingers for a moment, his lips soft and giving, dry and warm. His mouth opens, a flash of wicked tongue against Shiro’s bottom lip that he chases after. Keith denies him again.

Shiro is about to grab him, his hand in Keith’s hair, his bionic arm going for his waist, unattached and freer in its movements.

But Keith catches him off-guard. It’s what makes him so fearsome in a fight—his ability to anticipate his opponent’s movements, coupled with his speed.

And Keith knows Shiro better than anybody—knows Shiro when he’s _horny_ better than _anybody_.

Shiro finds himself pushed back against the furs, blinking up at the canvas ceiling with little idea of how he ended up there. Keith’s hands press him down, and he straddles Shiro in a fluid, practiced movement.

Will he ever get over the sight of Keith above him like this? His thighs warm and solid against Shiro’s hips, the way he rises up over Shiro’s body, the whole perfect length of him, his chest half-bared by the robe?

Unlikely.

Keith’s hair swings with the movement as he sits back and settles in Shiro’s lap, reaching up to run his fingers through it to push it back and away from his face. The robe is holding on for dear life around Keith’s waist, only barely covering his upper thigh. His smile is smug and mischievous. He’s possibly the sexiest thing Shiro has ever seen.

“I’ll go back to bed,” Keith says, his hair brushing along Shiro’s chest as he bends down over him. “If you come with me.”

Shiro can’t help smiling up at him, love-struck and dizzy with it. He palms Keith’s thigh, feels the solid muscle, the soft skin. Up and up and under the robe, grabbing a soft handful.

Keith kisses him again, a lingering kiss. A flash of tongue as he pulls back, that Shiro chases with his own tongue. Keith pulls back, still teasing, and grins.

Kosmo shifts next to the bed.

Shiro turns and sees him still curled around the bed, though his head is now ducked down on the floor.

Keith pays it no mind, and bends to bite Shiro’s jaw. His hair covers them like a curtain, warm and sweet.

“Keith,” he hisses. Keith moves across his jaw, lips soft and wet and sending shivers down Shiro’s spine. “The wolf.”

Keith sighs, a warm puff of breath, and raises his head, his hair in his face. He blows sharply to get it out of his eyes. Shiro knows his face is bright red, that he’s hard where Keith is sitting on top of him, and yet he feels an incongruous, bright tenderness in his chest at the artless gesture.

Keith is looking at the wolf.

“Hey,” he says. The wolf’s head peeks over the edge of the bed again. Then, in Galra, Keith says, “Perimeter.”

The wolf rises without missing a beat and shuffles out of the tent in silence. Before he goes, his glowing eyes meet Shiro’s.

He feels _seen_.

“Oh my God,” Shiro whispers, rubbing his face with his palm. “You sent him to check the perimeter.”

“Two birds, one stone,” Keith says, grinning again. He brushes his hair back and over one shoulder, out of his way. It bares the naked curve of it, the soft spot on his neck under his hairline, by his ear.

It really does it for Shiro, is the thing. Keith does.

Keith arches against him, the whole, hot line of him pressed to his chest. Shiro’s mouth goes dry.

“Any other complaints?”

Shiro says it mostly to be a brat. His hands are on Keith’s thighs, wandering up and down their length.

“Don’t you remember?”

His bionic hand comes up, large enough to cup most of Keith’s head. He fists it in Keith’s hair, long strands twisted in his fingers, pulled tight against Keith’s skull.

Keith’s mouth falls open against Shiro’s, and Shiro takes this chance to press a wet kiss to his bottom lip.

“These tents don’t have very good sound proofing,” Shiro says, and bites down on Keith’s lip.

A huff of muffled laughter against his mouth. Shiro can’t help smiling, or the warmth blooming in his chest, when Keith laughs like that. Breathy and a little goofy, his face hidden in Shiro’s shoulder and his warm breath stuttering against Shiro’s skin.

Shiro flips them over, and Keith’s leg part for him. He wraps his arms around Shiro’s shoulders and lets himself be kissed, Shiro’s hand against his jaw, holding him in place.

It’s like something out of a fantasy novel he might have read as a child. A tent and a bed piled with furs, warriors keeping watch outside. The dead of night broken by the sound of crackling embers, and his love under him like this, his hair spilling against the pillows.

Keith’s eyes glow like stars. He pulls Shiro in with his hands, and his mouth opens easy and hot. Shiro could just lie here forever, between Keith’s thighs, a vice-grip around his hips.

Even in this, Keith takes care of him. It’s hard to fall asleep, but it’s so much easier when he’s worn down and loose with pleasure. Easier when Keith holds him like this.

Shiro’s already forgotten what he said, lost in the wet glide of Keith’s tongue in his mouth. Then Keith pulls his hair and smiles against his lips.

“We’re just gonna have to be quiet,” he says. His hips hitch, the hand not in Shiro’s hair taking hold of his ass and pulling him into a slow grind that has his mouth fall open in a gasp. “Can you be quiet for me?”

The answer is— _no_ , but Shiro would do anything for Keith like this. Anything for Keith, period. So he nods, and kisses Keith again. He starts slow, with short, sweet kisses pressed to Keith’s bottom lip. Then he coaxes Keith’s mouth open, and swallows Keith’s breathy gasp.

They kiss for long minutes, hips rolling against each other. Shiro could get lost in kissing Keith, not coming up for hours. It’s hard not to moan, not to make a sound, when Keith seems to be doing his best to rile him up. His fangs are sharp where they bite down on Shiro’s lip, a hair’s breadth away from breaking skin. Shiro can taste iron, green tea, and Keith.

Then it occurs to him that there is one way to keep from making noise.

He has to tear himself away from Keith’s mouth, Keith’s hands clawing after him, and his bright eyes flashing.

“What—”

He doesn’t finish, because Shiro starts pressing kisses to his neck, his collarbone, his chest, his stomach. His destination is immediately apparent, his hands coming up to grip Keith’s legs and spread them wide, making room for his shoulders.

Keith lets out a lovely, breathy laugh. His fingers tangle in Shiro’s hair, where it’s longer at the front.

“Oh,” he whispers. Then, when Shiro takes him into his mouth, “ _Shiro._ ”

Keith can be vocal in bed, but Shiro has always been aware that it’s—not a performance, exactly, but a willingness to let himself go. That Keith is just as capable of keeping his pleasure quiet as to cry out.

Each little, involuntary gasp is hard-won and delicious. Shiro feels the weight of Keith’s cock in his mouth, his thighs soft and warm against his cheeks, and sinks into it and forgets all the world. There is nothing but Keith’s fingers in his hair, pulling, his heels digging into his back, the salty bitterness of pre-come on his tongue.

He’s down there a long time, listening to Keith’s little noises, riding the push and pull of his hips. He loses track of time. Then Keith’s body seizes—the push of his hips gets frantic, his hands scrambling for Shiro’s forearms where they’re wrapped around his thighs. He sucks in a breath, goes still for a long moment, all of his muscles locking up, poised on that perfect edge, and then… he lets go.

Shiro holds him through it, rides the aftershocks, swallows. He feels Keith’s belly heave with his silent gasps, palm splayed on his skin. And when Keith melts back against the pillows, spent, he lets the softening length slip from his mouth, and buries his face in Keith’s thigh.

He’s hard, of course, but his release seems suddenly secondary to lying here in the aftermath of Keith’s orgasm. To suck a bruise in the soft place where Keith’s leg meets his hip, and revel in the evidence of it, feel the small tremors running through Keith’s body.

Keith lets him, for a long time, closes his thighs gently around Shiro’s ears and holds him there, fingers running through his hair.

At long last, though, he tugs at Shiro’s hair and whispers, “Come here.”

Shiro goes. He can’t deny Keith anything. Keith draws him into a kiss, wraps his arms and legs around him and holds him down. And then, when he has Shiro’s undivided attention, he reaches down and wraps his hand around Shiro’s cock.

Shiro’s orgasm abruptly stops being an abstract, secondary thought.

He comes while biting into his own forearm to stifle the sounds, hips hitching into Keith’s grip, as Keith kisses his shoulder, his neck, his temple, and holds him tight.

After a long moment, Keith asks, “Better?”

Shiro huffs, still trembling and loose and buzzing with it. He nuzzles into Keith’s neck, then digs his fingers into the back of Keith’s thigh, right above the knee, where he’s most ticklish.

Keith shouts, an unflattering, loud squawk. Shiro laughs, even as Keith slaps his shoulder repeatedly.

“Asshole!” Keith says. “So much for keeping quiet.”

He pushes Shiro off of him, and Shiro goes tumbling to the side and hides his face in the furs to hide his laughter. The Blades go quiet, outside, then Shiro hears a couple of them snicker under their breath.

When he emerges from the furs, Keith is on his side, frowning at him, his hair in his eyes.

“See if I ever get you off again,” he says, a bit petulant. Shiro rolls on his side and puts a hand on his chest, scandalized.

“ _Baby!_ ”

Keith huffs and turns away, and Shiro, of course, chases after him. He wraps an arm around Keith’s waist and reels him in, pulls him flush against his body. He’s overwarm, all hard muscle and soft skin. Shiro presses kisses to his temple.

“Baby, please.”

He can feel the way Keith’s cheek twitches under his lips, the way he can’t suppress a smile when Shiro kisses the corner of his lip.

“Maybe,” Keith says, and he turns into Shiro’s mouth, like he can’t help but meet his kisses. “Maybe if you’re good.”

Eventually they shuffle back under the furs, wrapped up in each other, warm and secure. Eventually, Kosmo returns from his patrol to curl around their bed and keep watch during the night.

Eventually, they sleep.

Shiro doesn’t wake until the planet’s two suns are high in the sky. The piercing morning call of their guests wakes the entire camp. Keith huffs and groans and buries himself in the furs again. Shiro kisses the tuft of hair that peeks from the lump Keith has wrapped himself into.

He emerges from their tent in his looser civilian clothing, a bit more comfortable for breakfast than his uniform or his armor. The Blades not on duty have lowered their hoods and masks and they sit around the fire with steaming mugs of tea and plates of local breakfast.

The planet is Algerion IV, and the local people are known as the Fliba. They’re mostly humanoid, though their skin is tougher, leathery, and ranges across cooler tones of grey, green, blue, and purple. Brightly coloured feathers sprout from the crows of their heads and all the way down their spines. They’ve been up for hours, their day beginning with the rise of the first sun, at the rough equivalent of 4 AM.

The Fliba are bustling around the camp, and a few of their young warriors have joined the Blades to breakfast.

Shiro does the same. It’s a good morning.

Then Keith emerges from their tent. His hair is unbound, falling in messy waves around his face. He’s also in his civilian clothing, and his face looks like thunder.

The younger Blades around him freeze. Shiro tries not to laugh into his morning tea.

The thing is, he knows that face—put upon and grumpy, eyes puffy and squinting. Keith looks like this nine mornings out of ten, like the world is pissing him off just by virtue of existing. It’s just how it is. He looks like that even while actively cuddling Shiro, during their slow mornings off.

The Blades, apparently, don’t know that. And Shiro knows that there is at least a little genuine reprimand in Keith’s voice, when he barks out three names.

Three of the Blades cringe and stand, and slink towards where Keith is standing, his arms crossed.

Shiro can’t help his smile, then. The three Blades are young, but they still tower a solid foot above Keith. They all duck their heads and look contrite, while Keith looks at them with his grumpy morning face, and delivers a brief and brutal lecture on making noise during night watch.

Shiro is gonna make fun of him _so hard_ once they’re alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> The image of Keith sleeping with his hair spilling everywhere, and Shiro looking at him, is pretty much the entire reason this whole thing exists. 
> 
> That and the fact that I'm procrastinating on my long WIPs.
> 
> Thank you for reading <3 if you want to support this fic please comment and/or [retweet](https://twitter.com/seagreen_eyes/status/1109256499413639170)


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